The following is from the Eating Disorder Anonymous 12-steps.
1.) Make a list of food memories, from an early age until now. This can go in order, or just be random.
The exercise calls for me to work from childhood, but my sponsor says to start from when the relapse occurred. So that’s what I’m going to do. Alright, in terms of food memories, I’m not quite sure what this exercise is asking of me. All the memories I have of eating? All the memories I have of eating disorderly? All the memories I have of wishing I could eat? All the memories I wish I hadn’t eaten?
I started a diet in June of 2010 because I saw a picture of myself and I thought I looked like a cow. I registered at sparkpeople.com, determined to lose weight in a healthy way. At this point in time I had strong recovery and was attending 12-step meetings regularly. I had already worked the 12-steps and had almost three years of continued abstinence from any anorexic behaviors. I seldom weighed myself, and when I went to the doctor I even had them weigh my backwards. I didn’t care so much anymore about the number on the scale as I did my happiness, and my happiness was more important than my eating disorder.
But the picture. The picture of my humongous thighs, my chubby cheeks, and bigger hips. It was pretty disgusting in my eyes, and I really didn’t want to look that way anymore. My eating really was getting a bit out of control – 16 microwavable chicken fries for lunch? Really? No healthy balance of nutrition at all; no wonder I was gaining weight.
I wanted to lose two pounds a week, ten pounds total. In order to do that, it was recommended I eat 1200-1500 calories a day and exercise twice week for 30 minutes. I followed the diet very strictly, driving myself crazy entering in food statistics on a daily basis, almost spending 30 minutes alone online before even preparing a meal. My family would have to sit and wait for me to calculate my food; substituting this for that, finagling numbers, all so I didn’t go over my allotted amount of proteins, fats, carbs, and calories. It was a struggle at first; I was pretty hungry between meals, but it was manageable, and eventually I started losing weight.
Exercise was a no go, so weight loss was slow. But by the end of the summer I had lost the ten pounds I wanted to lose. I was 100 pounds, an ideal weight for my height. I liked my body, liked the way my clothes fit, and was proud I was able to lose the weight in a healthy manner.
By this time, meetings were non-existent because my new job conflicted with my meeting times. I was urged to go to weekend meetings by my sponsor, but I told her I felt I didn’t need them anymore. I was confident, I was happy, and I was able to live my life based on the 12-step principles on a daily basis. As long as I didn’t let this diet go out of hand, I would be fine. I had already learned everything I needed to learn in this recovery journey, and it was time to move on.
And then I thought 98 pounds sounded a lot better than 100. So I continued the diet. By that time I barely used sparkpeople because I memorized what calories were in certain foods. The insanity over the website had eased and that justified my behavior – if I wasn’t using the website, I wasn’t really on a diet anymore. I had made a successful lifestyle change and this was just how I ate now. I continued to drop weight until I reached 95 pounds. My weight hit a plateau and I thought at this point I could stop the diet and be okay with where I was.
But then I thought 90 pounds would be a great, even number to be at. However, my weight was stabilizing and in order to lose more I had to eat less, and the fact that I still wanted to lose more troubled me. I told my sponsor, but nothing really came of it (not because she wasn’t willing to help, but because I wasn’t willing to stop).
My calories kept lowering and instead of weighing once a week, it was everyday. And once that got out of control, I told my husband what was going on. A fight ensued, the scale was taken away and hidden, and there was a silent agreement that I would be able to use it once a week, no questions asked. No more talking about my problems, just blind faith that I was going to WORK ON IT.
I got laid off from my job at the end of 2010 and saw this as an opportunity to get back into recovery. I had decided at this point that I was “sort of” in relapse and needed to get back on the horse and nip this problem in the bud. I reworked my steps, still not fully convinced I really had a problem.
My husband and I were still trying to find fertility treatments at this time as we wanted to get pregnant. I was very open with the doctor about my past anorexia and when she recommended that I gain ten pounds, I told her I could. When in reality, I was scared to gain this weight and told myself I wasn’t going to make an effort until I really HAD to. And when we decided not to work with her, I secretly sighed in relief because then I could be this weight without a problem.
My weight stayed stable in the low 90s for about three months and then I got re-hired. This kept me from meetings again and the calories continued to drop as my weight kept hitting plateaus.
In May of 2011 I went to a family function and I was triggered because a sister-in-law of mine was eating only 500 calories a day in order to lose weight. She had lost a pound a day and had already lost 30 pounds total. By this time we struck out with another fertility treatment center and I was so frustrated that I made the decision to restrict my food in order to lose even more weight. I wanted to be out of the 90s so desperately that when I got home, I started an online eating disorder diary and triggered myself by watching ED movies all weekend.
The downward spiral continued. My caloric intake went from 1200 to 1000 to 900 to 800 to 700 and so on. The slower it took me to lose weight, the more calories I shed in a desperate attempt to lose quickly. My goal weights steadily dropped – 88, 86, 84, 83, 80, 78. I was weighing everyday despite my husband thinking I didn’t know where the scale was, and the more I weighed myself and the more food I restricted, the more secrets I had to keep in order to lose weight. I convinced myself that I wasn’t keeping these secrets to protect an eating disorder I did not have, but to keep everyone else around me from worrying. I didn’t have a problem, so why burden them with non-issues?
I ate all three daily meals, or the lack of meals, alone. My work schedule was perfect for hiding my behaviors, and when the weekends rolled around I would eat relatively normal to keep suspicion low. All the while, during the week, I spent most work hours invested in my eating disorder, reading eating disorder books, going on eating disorder websites. I spent mornings writing in my relapse diary. I spent hours calculating food, weight, BMIs, numbers, calories, days, etc.
The guilt piled on and piled on, and all the while I kept convincing myself that I was normal and couldn’t say anything because it would cause a greater fuss than necessary. Others kept insisting I was in trouble – coworkers began commenting on my weight and lack of food, people online insisted I needed help, my 12-step friends concerned from a distance. But did I really have a problem? The doctor’s said my blood work was normal – twice. My EKG was normal. My period was regular. My hair was thick. Sure, my fingers were blue when it was cold, I could no longer sit comfortably on our kitchen bar stools because they would bruise my thighs, and the bones in my back would ache in response to rubbing up against the back of the chair.
I watched hours of food network shows in order to satisfy my physical hunger. I began baking in an attempt to stay “in control” of whatever I felt out of control with. Sugar became the only thing I wanted to eat and when my husband would leave town for the weekend, I would plan binges. I hid food, I ate food in my car during work, I ate food in my car in the Safeway parking lot, I ate food all night – donuts, cake, cupcakes, cookies – I ate to satisfy everything. And when I finished all the food there was to finish, I looked at myself in disgust, I looked at the number on the scale in disgust, and the entire cycle would start again. A cupcake a day and nothing else. I’d lose three to five pounds during the week only to gain it all back in a weekend.
I got more afraid – afraid I would ruin my chances of having children, afraid I may die in my sleep. So guilty and sad I could not tell my husband my fears, so sad that I could not tell him I was scared I wasn’t going to wake up in the morning. I was scared I was going to have a heart attack. But when I kept getting normal test results, I convinced myself further that I really didn’t have a problem, and as soon as I reached my lowest weight, I would stop.
Six months have passed. Six months I’ve had an online relapse diary. Six months I’ve been deleting the browsing history on our family computer. Six months I’ve been weighing myself on a daily basis. Within those six months, that’s three romantic getaways I’ve fucked up by bingeing on every single one, worried more about my weight and how I look instead of spending quality time with my husband.
My metabolism has been fucked with. I can barely lose any weight anymore. I struggled on a daily basis, fighting my body’s urge to eat, for what? To lose .5 pounds in a week? But I did it anyway, because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed I had failed at being anorexic again. Embarrassed because I still got my period. Embarrassed because I was not yet emaciated. The pictures I posted of my body online were not good enough despite getting comments on how thin I looked. I was a failure.
November of 2011 – Thanksgiving weekend. Four days of complete hell. I restricted all week in preparation of the big event. I hosted and I had decided to go completely crazy with the food. Thanksgiving day I over indulged and took laxatives to compensate. When they didn’t work, I took even more because I was eating too much. So I ate and ate and went back and forth to the bathroom because the laxatives finally kicked in. Then I ate some more. I think I lost my period that month, so I felt extremely guilty. But I wasn’t at my goal weight, and I couldn’t stop then. One month without my period was NOTHING. It was NO BIG DEAL.
Sunday night I cried alone in the shower. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t keep starving myself and then binge and then starve and then take laxatives and then binge and then starve. I couldn’t keep lying to my husband. I couldn’t go on like that.
I told my husband on November 27th, 2011….and the story continues.
The following is from the Eating Disorder Anonymous 12-steps.
1.) Make a list of food memories, from an early age until now. This can go in order, or just be random.
The exercise calls for me to work from childhood, but my sponsor says to start from when the relapse occurred. So that’s what I’m going to do. Alright, in terms of food memories, I’m not quite sure what this exercise is asking of me. All the memories I have of eating? All the memories I have of eating disorderly? All the memories I have of wishing I could eat? All the memories I wish I hadn’t eaten?
I started a diet in June of 2010 because I saw a picture of myself and I thought I looked like a cow. I registered at sparkpeople.com, determined to lose weight in a healthy way. At this point in time I had strong recovery and was attending 12-step meetings regularly. I had already worked the 12-steps and had almost three years of continued abstinence from any anorexic behaviors. I seldom weighed myself, and when I went to the doctor I even had them weigh my backwards. I didn’t care so much anymore about the number on the scale as I did my happiness, and my happiness was more important than my eating disorder.
But the picture. The picture of my humongous thighs, my chubby cheeks, and bigger hips. It was pretty disgusting in my eyes, and I really didn’t want to look that way anymore. My eating really was getting a bit out of control – 16 microwavable chicken fries for lunch? Really? No healthy balance of nutrition at all; no wonder I was gaining weight.
I wanted to lose two pounds a week, ten pounds total. In order to do that, it was recommended I eat 1200-1500 calories a day and exercise twice week for 30 minutes. I followed the diet very strictly, driving myself crazy entering in food statistics on a daily basis, almost spending 30 minutes alone online before even preparing a meal. My family would have to sit and wait for me to calculate my food; substituting this for that, finagling numbers, all so I didn’t go over my allotted amount of proteins, fats, carbs, and calories. It was a struggle at first; I was pretty hungry between meals, but it was manageable, and eventually I started losing weight.
Exercise was a no go, so weight loss was slow. But by the end of the summer I had lost the ten pounds I wanted to lose. I was 100 pounds, an ideal weight for my height. I liked my body, liked the way my clothes fit, and was proud I was able to lose the weight in a healthy manner.
By this time, meetings were non-existent because my new job conflicted with my meeting times. I was urged to go to weekend meetings by my sponsor, but I told her I felt I didn’t need them anymore. I was confident, I was happy, and I was able to live my life based on the 12-step principles on a daily basis. As long as I didn’t let this diet go out of hand, I would be fine. I had already learned everything I needed to learn in this recovery journey, and it was time to move on.
And then I thought 98 pounds sounded a lot better than 100. So I continued the diet. By that time I barely used sparkpeople because I memorized what calories were in certain foods. The insanity over the website had eased and that justified my behavior – if I wasn’t using the website, I wasn’t really on a diet anymore. I had made a successful lifestyle change and this was just how I ate now. I continued to drop weight until I reached 95 pounds. My weight hit a plateau and I thought at this point I could stop the diet and be okay with where I was.
But then I thought 90 pounds would be a great, even number to be at. However, my weight was stabilizing and in order to lose more I had to eat less, and the fact that I still wanted to lose more troubled me. I told my sponsor, but nothing really came of it (not because she wasn’t willing to help, but because I wasn’t willing to stop).
My calories kept lowering and instead of weighing once a week, it was everyday. And once that got out of control, I told my husband what was going on. A fight ensued, the scale was taken away and hidden, and there was a silent agreement that I would be able to use it once a week, no questions asked. No more talking about my problems, just blind faith that I was going to WORK ON IT.
I got laid off from my job at the end of 2010 and saw this as an opportunity to get back into recovery. I had decided at this point that I was “sort of” in relapse and needed to get back on the horse and nip this problem in the bud. I reworked my steps, still not fully convinced I really had a problem.
My husband and I were still trying to find fertility treatments at this time as we wanted to get pregnant. I was very open with the doctor about my past anorexia and when she recommended that I gain ten pounds, I told her I could. When in reality, I was scared to gain this weight and told myself I wasn’t going to make an effort until I really HAD to. And when we decided not to work with her, I secretly sighed in relief because then I could be this weight without a problem.
My weight stayed stable in the low 90s for about three months and then I got re-hired. This kept me from meetings again and the calories continued to drop as my weight kept hitting plateaus.
In May of 2011 I went to a family function and I was triggered because a sister-in-law of mine was eating only 500 calories a day in order to lose weight. She had lost a pound a day and had already lost 30 pounds total. By this time we struck out with another fertility treatment center and I was so frustrated that I made the decision to restrict my food in order to lose even more weight. I wanted to be out of the 90s so desperately that when I got home, I started an online eating disorder diary and triggered myself by watching ED movies all weekend.
The downward spiral continued. My caloric intake went from 1200 to 1000 to 900 to 800 to 700 and so on. The slower it took me to lose weight, the more calories I shed in a desperate attempt to lose quickly. My goal weights steadily dropped – 88, 86, 84, 83, 80, 78. I was weighing everyday despite my husband thinking I didn’t know where the scale was, and the more I weighed myself and the more food I restricted, the more secrets I had to keep in order to lose weight. I convinced myself that I wasn’t keeping these secrets to protect an eating disorder I did not have, but to keep everyone else around me from worrying. I didn’t have a problem, so why burden them with non-issues?
I ate all three daily meals, or the lack of meals, alone. My work schedule was perfect for hiding my behaviors, and when the weekends rolled around I would eat relatively normal to keep suspicion low. All the while, during the week, I spent most work hours invested in my eating disorder, reading eating disorder books, going on eating disorder websites. I spent mornings writing in my relapse diary. I spent hours calculating food, weight, BMIs, numbers, calories, days, etc.
The guilt piled on and piled on, and all the while I kept convincing myself that I was normal and couldn’t say anything because it would cause a greater fuss than necessary. Others kept insisting I was in trouble – coworkers began commenting on my weight and lack of food, people online insisted I needed help, my 12-step friends concerned from a distance. But did I really have a problem? The doctor’s said my blood work was normal – twice. My EKG was normal. My period was regular. My hair was thick. Sure, my fingers were blue when it was cold, I could no longer sit comfortably on our kitchen bar stools because they would bruise my thighs, and the bones in my back would ache in response to rubbing up against the back of the chair.
I watched hours of food network shows in order to satisfy my physical hunger. I began baking in an attempt to stay “in control” of whatever I felt out of control with. Sugar became the only thing I wanted to eat and when my husband would leave town for the weekend, I would plan binges. I hid food, I ate food in my car during work, I ate food in my car in the Safeway parking lot, I ate food all night – donuts, cake, cupcakes, cookies – I ate to satisfy everything. And when I finished all the food there was to finish, I looked at myself in disgust, I looked at the number on the scale in disgust, and the entire cycle would start again. A cupcake a day and nothing else. I’d lose three to five pounds during the week only to gain it all back in a weekend.
I got more afraid – afraid I would ruin my chances of having children, afraid I may die in my sleep. So guilty and sad I could not tell my husband my fears, so sad that I could not tell him I was scared I wasn’t going to wake up in the morning. I was scared I was going to have a heart attack. But when I kept getting normal test results, I convinced myself further that I really didn’t have a problem, and as soon as I reached my lowest weight, I would stop.
Six months have passed. Six months I’ve had an online relapse diary. Six months I’ve been deleting the browsing history on our family computer. Six months I’ve been weighing myself on a daily basis. Within those six months, that’s three romantic getaways I’ve fucked up by bingeing on every single one, worried more about my weight and how I look instead of spending quality time with my husband.
My metabolism has been fucked with. I can barely lose any weight anymore. I struggled on a daily basis, fighting my body’s urge to eat, for what? To lose .5 pounds in a week? But I did it anyway, because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed I had failed at being anorexic again. Embarrassed because I still got my period. Embarrassed because I was not yet emaciated. The pictures I posted of my body online were not good enough despite getting comments on how thin I looked. I was a failure.
November of 2011 – Thanksgiving weekend. Four days of complete hell. I restricted all week in preparation of the big event. I hosted and I had decided to go completely crazy with the food. Thanksgiving day I over indulged and took laxatives to compensate. When they didn’t work, I took even more because I was eating too much. So I ate and ate and went back and forth to the bathroom because the laxatives finally kicked in. Then I ate some more. I think I lost my period that month, so I felt extremely guilty. But I wasn’t at my goal weight, and I couldn’t stop then. One month without my period was NOTHING. It was NO BIG DEAL.
Sunday night I cried alone in the shower. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t keep starving myself and then binge and then starve and then take laxatives and then binge and then starve. I couldn’t keep lying to my husband. I couldn’t go on like that.
I told my husband on November 27th, 2011….and the story continues.